aptive,
of his son. The king of the Vandals supported, by threats and
solicitations, the fair pretensions of his Roman ally; and assigned, as
one of the motives of the war, the refusal of the senate and people to
acknowledge their lawful prince, and the unworthy preference which they
had given to a stranger. [106] The friendship of the public enemy might
render Olybrius still more unpopular to the Italians; but when Ricimer
meditated the ruin of the emperor Anthemius, he tempted, with the
offer of a diadem, the candidate who could justify his rebellion by an
illustrious name and a royal alliance. The husband of Placidia, who,
like most of his ancestors, had been invested with the consular dignity,
might have continued to enjoy a secure and splendid fortune in the
peaceful residence of Constantinople; nor does he appear to have been
tormented by such a genius as cannot be amused or occupied, unless
by the administration of an empire. Yet Olybrius yielded to the
importunities of his friends, perhaps of his wife; rashly plunged
into the dangers and calamities of a civil war; and, with the secret
connivance of the emperor Leo, accepted the Italian purple, which was
bestowed, and resumed, at the capricious will of a Barbarian. He landed
without obstacle (for Genseric was master of the sea) either at Ravenna,
or the port of Ostia, and immediately proceeded to the camp of Ricimer,
where he was received as the sovereign of the Western world. [107]

[Footnote 106: Priscus, Excerpt. Legation p. 74. Procopius de Bell.
Vandel l. i. c. 6, p. 191. Eudoxia and her daughter were restored after
the death of Majorian. Perhaps the consulship of Olybrius (A.D. 464) was
bestowed as a nuptial present.]

[Footnote 107: The hostile appearance of Olybrius is fixed
(notwithstanding the opinion of Pagi) by the duration of his reign. The
secret connivance of Leo is acknowledged by Theophanes and the Paschal
Chronicle. We are ignorant of his motives; but in this obscure period,
our ignorance extends to the most public and important facts.]

The patrician, who had extended his posts from the Anio to the Melvian
bridge, already possessed two quarters of Rome, the Vatican and the
Janiculum, which are separated by the Tyber from the rest of the city;
[108] and it may be conjectured, that an assembly of seceding senators
imitated, in the choice of Olybrius, the forms of a legal election.
But the body of the senate and people firmly adhered to the caus